I’ll admit to a fascination with IKEA, the Swedish home furnishing megastore with major outposts in major cities. It may be because the store impressed me when I first saw one in the Netherlands decades ago (so big, so clean, so cheap). It may be that I’ll like any store that offers Swedish meatballs and lingonberries in the cafeteria.
But in recent visits, I’ve been impressed with the way they convey their message and their culture to their customers. Certainly, it’s there in every aspect of what they sell, what they charge, and how they arrange it for sale. But there are also these little factoids posted in odd little places where people have time to look.
There are table signs in the lunchroom, explaining in friendly prose why you have to bus the table yourself, why there aren’t as many sales people to help you as you might like, and why you have to assemble all the furniture yourself (all to benefit you of course). There are even little conversation cards posted in the rest room stalls, with a short paragraph and a photo about the store’s strategy, values, or history (“IKEA” is an acronym constructed from the founder’s initials — Ingvar Kamprad — plus the first letters of the farm and village where he grew up — Elmtaryd and Agunnaryd).
A bit obvious, perhaps, to tell a little story in places where people have a moment to read one. But it’s an obvious step I haven’t seen in most cultural facilities.
Much of our job in managing cultural spaces is to increase our visitors’ opportunity to succeed in the task they came for — learning something new, recalling something remembered, connecting with a partner or friend through a shared experience. Dare I suggest that interesting little factoids in the restroom advance many of these goals?
At IKEA, I’ll be darned if I didn’t emerge from the restroom with an urge to share the little factoid with my wife (“Do you know where the name IKEA comes from?” says I with a knowing tone). She had a different factoid to share (“Do you know why they design all their furniture to fit in flat packages?” says she). Together we constructed a little moment of meaning (not dramatic meaning, mind you, but a tiny little moment), with IKEA as both the subject and the source.
So, I hereby propose the installation of little frames in all cultural facility restroom stalls (okay, urinals too), with a rotating series of information cards about the venue, the event, the discipline, or the artists. To encourage and reward conversation, you would need to post different factoids in every stall (giving everyone an opportunity to look smart). And of course, the factoids would need to be interesting, relevant to the event, and quirky enough to be shared (a little tidbit about acoustics, perhaps, or theater terminology, or a nugget about the composer to be performed — “Did you know that medical tests of a lock of Beethoven’s hair suggest he had lead poisoning that may have caused his life-long illnesses, impacted his personality, and possibly contributed to his death?” — and other happy stuff like that).
Some symphony, theater, museum, or performing arts facility must have thought of this already. Please let me know who you are…
Brian Newman says
Don’t know any who have thought of this, but there was a great article in the NYTimes this Sunday about Ikea’s philosophy extending into how they’ve built their offices. I would argue that to learn from IKEA, arts groups will need to think beyond bathroom cards into actually creating a culture, everywhere at their facility, that duplicates their mission and ideals.
Rob Gold says
I hate playbills and program books. Most of what is offered by the live performing arts can be obtained cheaper and more conveniently in canned form (CDs, DVDs, etc.), useable on your schedule, without getting dressed up, a long drive and search for expensive paking. Go ahead, grab a pretzel stick and “air conduct” in your undies to your heart’s content. What we do offer, uniquely, is the opportunity to congregate, to have a shared experience.
So, what do most of us do to build on this “unique selling propositon”? We give them a cheaply produced booklet crammed with tiny type, which they have only ten or fifteen minutes to read in a semi-dark room, between the ads for jewelry stores and retirement homes. This also offers endless lists of donors, obscure notes on the program and, for theater, thumbnail bios where the dramaturg thanks her cat. What bettwe way to induce every student’s perennial question, “will this be on the test?”
At suburban Detroit’s Meadow Brook Theatre I campaigned to put the important information, like your Ikea notes, on big lobby displays, where the audience could share. We did a survey of subscribers and, to my dismay, they LOVED their little playbills, and expressed no interest in other ways of getting and sharing information.
The kind of interactive displays I propose were used at both the Indianapolis Symphony and Ottawa’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, to good effect. The displays highlighted featured instruments of the orchestra, or detailed programmatic themes that ran through several linked concerts. These displays always attracted crowds, who could be overheard discussing the contents.
One feature which distinguished both of these groups is that they owned/controlled their venues, and could leave their displays up for a month or more at a time — something not viable for many groups’ rented facilities. Both groups continued to use the tired old playbills for these events. As usual, the inserts all fell out and littered the floor after each concert.
I imagine also that you could use supertitle screens at concerts to give a work’s movement titles at the start of each part (please, no jokes about when to applaud…).
David Pausch says
To follow on Brian’s comment, a good first step for arts groups would be to let go of their love for the top down, vertical heirarchical administrative structure for a flatter model like IKEA has, which is described in the same article.
I’ve often thought that the one thing arts groups took when they were urged to “run more like a business” (I won’t even go into why I think that statement is inherently ludicrous…I’m sure I did in 10 other replies…) was the old-fashioned gray flannel suit corporate ideal of the all-powerful President or CEO. Too often, everything from postcard designs to concession prices have to be passed through the artistic and/or managing director’s hands for approval. It makes innovation like Andrew suggests difficult because it’s such a hassle to make anything new happen.
It’s much easier to stick to the standard Playbill, program, donor list, etc…because those already have a tacit sign off from the big cheeses.
Joan says
“Most of what is offered by the live performing arts can be obtained cheaper and more conveniently in canned form (CDs, DVDs, etc.), ”
I have never played a concert that was like a CD. Ever in 30 years. I have done several CD recording sessions. If an orchestra is being managed by persons who secretly — or not so secretly — believe the above quote, perhaps you should stay at home. Don’t go to stage plays either or musical theatre. Watch them too, on TV or on screen.
But isn’t there a name for the art of plays on screen? Isn’t it called film — an entirely different art medium and process and constructed with different intentions, personnel requiring different skills and seeking in the present moment to do different things than a play? Why is live music made the equivalent of recorded music when the same differences apply?
Go to a recording studio while an orchestra is taping Mahler — stop, start, redo, less sound, perfect that solo again please. Everyone’s in bluejeans and sweat’s sitting beside coffee cups, and open instrument cases, some bleary-eyed, some grumpy, some attentive and all unsatisfied. The room is full of microphones and strange soft-footed men move around all the time shifting mikes and lights, going out in between takes to smoke in halls with florescent lighting. And you want to compare this to a live concert? There is NO comparison.
Perhaps the truth is that our society has so lost the ability to take in living non-verbal expressions of feeling, that most people can actually no longer take in music’s subject. Music’s subject is not sound bites or note data or historical factoids but in-the-present, living human feeling. I have been working on Mahler’s Fifth and a Wagner Overture to Tannhauser for a month now, firstly getting every note right,then dynamics, the shape of the lines, the accents, the peculiarities of Mahler and of Wagner. One hundred living breathing musicians having privately done this work at home, are going to work together in four rehearsals and then present this work in two concerts in our city and in Toronto, joining forces with another orchestra because our individual budgets can’t afford the size of orchestra needed to perform this kind of work. If you think the electricity and passion and dedication to Mahler’s ideas about life and human relations which we will be containing and then giving to the audience is exactly what you get now on a CD of Boston Symphony playing Mahler 10 years ago in a place where YOU ARE NOT NOW ALIVE, well…I’s very sorry for you. But I’m sure you will never know what you’re missing.
Pardon this analogy, but I’d rather have real sex than watch sex scenes in a film …no matter how well its crafted. Perhaps McLuhan said it concisely when he wrote “The Medium is the Message”. In this case the medium is living musicians’ bodies and whole persons, their sounds and their working movements and a living audience in a real room in the present moment when anything can happen. You can write bits of info on pieces of toilet paper or on washroom cards or build IKEA halls in the lobby or set up free instrument trials or whatever but they have NO bearing on a person’s ablility to receive knowledge through feeling from music. A child would do that better with no facts at all.
The manager of a symphony works to enable music performances. If the MUSIC will be expressed to our audience better if we musicians all stand on our heads or hand out scores or dress in shades of violet then let’s do it. But I don’t get the connection to the music. As far as I know, to make great music we need hard working — very hard working — musicians with an attachment to the felt meaning of organized sounds (called musical talent in some circles), good instruments, a sensitive, hardworking conductor with a strong awareness of his individual perceptions in relation to sound, great hall accoustics, (who cares what the lobby looks like) a silent environment in which to let fall the softest and loudest notes, and conscious open feeling/awareness from our listeners with (also)an attachment to the felt meaning of organized sounds. That’s it. That’s what live music is all ABOUT….Oh, and some money for the WORK.
Samantha Sawyer says
Bathroom advertising has worked well for us for the past 10 years. Our publication, Stall Weekly, is posted weekly during the academic year (we’re a university performing arts venue) in stalls and by urinals in our building and across campus. Because it’s not just in our building, we don’t provide tidbits about specific performances, but we do list all the events happening around campus for the week.
This method has worked wonderfully at catching those elusive students who complain they never know what’s going on. Everyone uses the bathroom at some point! I have even seen our patrons from off campus take Stall Weekly from the door and tuck it in a purse or pocket. It’s that popular!
I can only hope that people are leaving our bathrooms with more knowledge of our events and other campus life than when they walked in. And that they keep returning to see what’s coming up next!
Ruth Deery says
CD’s, films, tapes and the like–of course they are not a real substitute for live performances in a hall surrounded by other apprecitive people. However, they can be great at extending one’s experience. I can listen to a recorded opera before and after seeing the real thing and learn and appreciate the opera at a higher level.
This is analogous to my appreciation of travelogues, documentaries, National Geographic articles, and even the background scenes of some commercials which feature glaciers and mountain scenes. Some picture places I’ve been back when I was climbing mountains; some picture similar places I’ll never see; but I would get almost no pleasure at all from these extensions of my experience without the experience itself.
So don’t low-rate canned experiences. They can enhance and extend our own real-life experiences.
Joan says
“So don’t low-rate canned experiences. They can enhance and extend our own real-life experiences.”
I have been using a CD to prepare Mahler’s Fifth, and I know many musicians — and conductors — who learn repertoire this way. This is a well matched use of medium to purpose I think. I reacted above to the previous comment …. “Most of what is offered by the live performing arts can be obtained cheaper and more conveniently in canned form (CDs, DVDs, etc.)” which reflects an inability to know and then to receive what the art is about.